


more than anything

by sublime_jumbles



Series: 'til there was no more coast to wander [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Asexual Henry, Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, Chubby Gansey, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Feeding, Feeding Kink, Hand Feeding, Holidays, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Non-Sexual Kink, Overeating, Post-Canon, Post-The Raven King, Queerplatonic Relationships, Stuffing, Weight Gain, Weight Issues, asexual gansey, demisexual blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 04:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublime_jumbles/pseuds/sublime_jumbles
Summary: holidays with family can be rough! but having two partners who really want to snuggle you and feed you christmas cookies can help a lot.(a festive interlude from sophomore year)





	more than anything

**Author's Note:**

> /// very brief cw for a couple negative/fatphobic remarks ///
> 
> also! this time of year is fraught with diet culture/diet propaganda and pressure to indulge vs pressure to be "good" and use your new year's resolutions to lose weight and eat better and all of that. pls take care of yourself and be gentle with yourself and remember that it's 1000% okay to eat what you want. you don't have to feel guilty for indulging and you don't have to try to lose weight if that isn't what you want or what you need to be healthy and happy. your body is beautiful the way it is and you don't need to lose weight/be thin to be valued or loved!!

Henrietta at Christmastime was a quietly breathtaking phenomenon, at least if you were Richard Campbell Gansey III. The mountain air was sweet and crisp, scalloped with the smoky closeness of woodstoves cheerfully keeping their families warm and fireplaces celebrating chilly weather at last. There was no snow yet to speak of, but strings of lights lined storefronts and wreaths hugged front doors and streetlamps like reunited lovers, and Gansey loved it to pieces, all of it.

He loved less the inevitable crush of relatives who hadn’t seen him since he’d been home from Harvard for the previous Easter, and the effortlessly ostentatious decor of his parents’ house in DC, and the sensation of being unmoored in his own home when lately he’d felt more sure of himself than ever, of feeling like he’d lost part of himself in trying to live for himself. He’d always been so predictable, his answers to his relatives’ questions nothing less than they’d expect, but nothing more either. He’d always been exactly as he’d been expected to be, and it felt strange to begin to admit that perhaps he was not at all the person they knew him to be.

He sat in the Pig outside of Fox Way, mulling it over, trying to get comfortable. He’d killed the lights as he’d rolled up to the house, the better to give himself a moment to just _be_ before someone noticed the Camaro outside.  

He shifted against the leather of the driver’s seat, thumbing at the waistband of his khakis. These were his nice ones, the ones Blue called his Special Occasion Republican Pants, no matter how vigorously he reminded her that he’d switched parties when he’d registered to vote in Massachusetts. He hadn’t worn them since last Easter, and he’d put on a considerable amount of weight since then - to what seemed to be the constant shock, amusement, and confusion of his relatives - and the button was biting into the soft pudge of his stomach, more and more unforgiving as the night went on. Usually Gansey did not mind this - he’d come to associate it with pleasure, with indulgence, to looks of awe and thrill on Blue and Henry’s faces - but tonight it felt like a nag, a pointed reminder that nothing about him fit quite right anymore.

He took a deep breath, the button digging in further, and got out of the car.

As always, the door to 300 Fox Way opened before he could knock, and Orla had a moment to give him a friendly smirk and ask, “Are you here to deck Blue’s halls after all, Dickie?” before Blue appeared behind her like a tiny, festive missile and dragged him away.

Orla trailed them, dangling a wad of mistletoe from her long red nails, until Blue said loudly, “All right already!” and shot Gansey a long-suffering look. 

“Want a kiss?” she asked, casting a sour glance at Orla. “I don’t think we have a choice.” 

“I’d love a kiss,” he said gamely, and Orla watched smugly as Blue braced her hands on his plump hips and stood on her toes to kiss the tip of his nose. He bumped his forehead against hers, and just held her for a moment, trying to make that instant theirs instead of Orla’s, and then Blue pulled from him to glare back at her cousin.

“Happy now?” she asked, and Orla nodded, her full violet lips stretching into a coy smile.

“Carry on,” she said, drifting away, and Blue rolled her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said, taking his hand and leading him down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. The walls of the hall were bright and crowded with photos and framed dried flowers and strange works of art that various family members had explained to him, and the kitchen was bright and crowded with people and brimming with flowers and strange holiday artifacts that Gansey wished someone would explain to him.

“It’s okay,” he said when they halted in the kitchen doorway, basking in the light, the cheer, the utter comfort with which the house welcomed him. “I don’t mind Orla.”

Blue spiked an eyebrow. “Anymore.”

He laughed. “Anymore,” he conceded, pulling her close. She helped him out of his overcoat and hung it on the coat tree just inside the kitchen, then slipped her hand between the waistband of his pants and the bottom of his sweater, her fingers soft and warm against his skin. The taxed button of his khakis sensed her hands nearing and begged for mercy, but Gansey shifted his hips until the discomfort lessened. He’d had these pants let out after Easter, but apparently not enough to accommodate the weight he’d put on this past semester. They were uncomfortably snug around the tops of his thighs, a part of his body he’d never given much thought to until he’d begun gaining weight. He’d gotten pudgy in the middle first, then grown round and thick through his hips and thighs and backside, and he was still figuring out how to buy clothes or have them tailored so that they fit him everywhere. The hem of his sweater had been riding up over the curves of his sides all day, and he couldn’t help but think - more than a little proudly - that it had been a little too large for him last Christmas. 

Blue squeezed at his belly, and he thought that the sweater fit perfectly now that it was just small enough to tease Blue with the attention it called to his love handles. He’d let her or Henry do the honors of relieving the button of his pants, he decided, but not yet. Not _here_ , certainly, although the idea of doing something so kinky _here_ , with everyone around them, undeniably sent a glimmer of excitement through him. 

She had what appeared to be gold tinsel threaded through her hair, which was separated down the middle and plaited into two of the shortest braids Gansey had ever seen. Glitter mingled with the freckles on her cheeks, an occupational hazard of spending even the shortest of times at Fox Way during the holiday season, and she was wearing a dusty pink velvet jumper over what appeared to be a shirt made of soda-can tabs and candy wrappers and a pair of floral tights. She was radiant in the multicolored glow of the Christmas lights lining the doorframe, and Gansey pressed the longest and deepest of kisses to the crown of her head, where her brown skin showed through the part in her dark hair. 

“Was home okay?” she asked, pushing closer to him as Jimi squeezed by clutching two large cactus-shaped cocktail glasses full of something pink.

He shrugged. “Well, I told them I was dating you and Henry and that went about as well as expected.” 

Her eyes went wide, and he loved her for the way she immediately dropped her hand from his waist to lace her fingers in his. “What happened?”

He leaned against the doorframe with a sigh. “My parents seem to have convinced themselves that _boyfriend_ is a term that young people use to refer to close male friends. They’re fine with my dating _you_ , they love you. And they love Henry, but they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that I also love Henry, in a very different way.” 

“Oh, Gansey,” she said, somehow audible over the joyful noise of the kitchen, and she rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand, leaning her head against his chest. Sometimes Gansey thought he could hear Blue anywhere, that if she whispered his name in Henrietta he would hear her in Boston, and he liked the idea of her voice traveling along the ley line, a present that didn’t need wrapping. “That’s horrible.”

“I didn’t expect them to understand,” he said, taking her other hand to play with. “But … I _hoped_. And anyway, that wasn’t nearly as much of an uproar as the rest of my family learning that I had stopped considering political science and declared a history major. Or that I had dropped crew for good. Or that I had switched parties.”

“You told them that?” she exclaimed, eyes going wide again. “Oh, Gansey, you didn’t.”

He laughed a little at her horror. “I didn’t. But my aunt has a friend who has a friend who has a friend who … I don’t even know. I think she thought she was doing the right thing when she asked my aunt if there’d been a mistake in the system, because I was registered as a Democrat, but of course _that_ got back to my mom and I had to explain and … she isn’t happy. She’s obviously trying to play it off like I’m my own person and can make my own choices and like, encourage a spirited intellectual debate or whatever, but. It’s not like I could even vote for her if I’m registered in Massachusetts.”

Relaying it to Blue, he felt some of the stress lift from his shoulders. Yes, he felt bad that he’d betrayed his family like this; yes _,_ he felt bad that they’d found out this way, that they’d found out at all. But maybe it was a silly thing to feel bad about, in the end - he _was_ his own person, and he _was_ entitled to his own choices, and if there were ever a time when he was ready to accept that as truth, it was now.

“But it’s okay,” he continued before Blue could respond, because he could see she was gearing up to offer him an apology for how bad his family was at understanding him, at letting go of him, and he didn’t want her to feel obligated to give that apology when it wasn’t her fault. “I don’t want to feel bad about that tonight. I want to have an actually enjoyable Christmas with you and - where’s Henry?”

Blue smiled, and Gansey felt a little more stress evaporate from the mass weighing in him. “Last I saw, he was playing Legos with the little cousins. I think he was building a yacht for Madonna.”

Gansey laughed. “That sounds like Henry. Shall we find him?”

They pushed off into the kitchen, and Maura, noticing Gansey’s arrival at last, announced it to everyone else, igniting a domino line of shouted season’s greetings and enormous hugs and trays of food brandished in his direction, and he delighted in returning the greetings and the hugs and accepting the food, and when he and Blue emerged on the other side, Blue clinging to the hem of his sweater, his hands were occupied with a groaning plate of finger foods and a sloshing glass of - _something_. It was redder than the pink cactus cocktails Jimi had passed by with, but smelled fruity and voraciously alcoholic when he sniffed it.

“Mom made the bacon-scallop things, so they should be at least okay,” Blue explained as they wound through various rooms in search of Henry and cousins. “Don’t eat that olive thing, Tia Lourdes made that and she always uses too much salt. The _maamoul_ cookies are really good, Cousin Sahar did those. Auntie Dimple made the little round _gulab jamun_ , you'll like them. And the banana pudding is from Calla’s cousin Angie. Hers always turns out better than Calla’s but _do not_ tell Calla I told you that.”

Gansey laughed and let her tow him along. “I appreciate you, Jane. This isn’t counting all those cookies you made, is it?” 

Blue went red under the candlelight of the hallway. Gansey had only ever seen sconces intended for real candles in houses like his parents’, but they looked more at home in Fox Way than they did in DC. “No, the cookies are the finale.”

Gansey’s admittedly still-overfull stomach flip-flopped. “I can’t wait,” he said, and if he could have leaned in and kissed Blue, proper and true, he would have. 

They found Henry lying on his stomach, surrounded by children, a welcome island in a sea of Lego pieces. He was building something that might have been a limousine, or a private jet, or a yacht, or some new Cheng invention that somehow combined all three. Gansey had never played much with Legos as a child - he had never played much at all - but his heart burst to see Henry so earnestly engrossed in such a sweetly juvenile task.

“Merry Christmas, Cheng-Man,” he said over the hubbub of children hopped up on post-present-opening adrenaline, and Henry rolled over to see him. 

“Ganseyboy!” he crowed, abandoning his ambiguously purposed vessel and leaping up. He was wearing a violently turquoise cashmere v-neck Gansey had grown out of sometime in April, and Gansey nearly laughed aloud to see him wearing it so magnificently.

Henry embraced him with the exuberance of a puppy left alone to believe its owner would never return home again, and Gansey handed off his plate and glass to Blue in time to hold him with the same wildly affectionate fervor. One of the most exhilarating discoveries about leaving for college had been that coming back to Blue and Henry never grew any less thrilling. 

“We missed you earlier, G-Three,” said Henry once they’d pulled out of the hug, and he and Blue and Gansey stood hand in hand, their own little coven-within-a-coven-within-a-coven. “How was your charmingly conservative holiday?”

Gansey groaned, the sharp elbow of a nag returning to his stomach. “May I tell you while lying in both of your arms?”

“Absolutely,” said Henry. “Lead the way, Blue Planet.” To the young cousins, who sensed his imminent departure and were beginning to squall about it, he bent with his hands on his knees and said, “I will return later, tiny comrades. Please build a castle for Madonna in my absence.”

Gansey gathered his plate and glass from the side table Blue had deposited it on to better hold hands with them, and they followed Blue to her room, where her year-round chili pepper string lights were a defiantly nondenominational echo of the seasonal decorations swamping the rest of the house. 

She and Henry got comfortable on her bed, coaxing her various food-, flora-, and fauna-shaped pillows into shape with their fists, and Gansey let himself flop between them, propped up on a stuffed doughnut and a plush pierogi, the latter of which he knew Henry had given her for her birthday last year. On their road trip, they had tried their first pierogi in Michigan, and even Blue had liked them so much that Henry had declared them an instant hit.

Gansey settled back, Henry pressing a short kiss to his temple and Blue tucked against him with a hand under his sweater. He was wearing a vivid green crewneck with red snowflakes knit into it, and he thought it was quite festive even though Blue had declared it horrible the previous Christmas.

“You’re full,” she said softly, palming the curve of his stomach and poking gently at the little cleft below his navel. The skin just beneath that was still begging for release from the strain of his pants, but Blue didn’t venture that far. “Are you sure you can eat all this?” 

He eyed the plate of food, then looked back at her. “How many cookies are you planning to feed me?”

She bit her lower lip, looking up at him, half-coy and half-flustered. It made Gansey smile, but he could feel himself beginning to fluster too, in the bubbly, excited way that preceded anything kinky. “I made a lot,” she said, gently squeezing a handful of his belly. “I’m not going to give you a number because then you’ll feel like you need to eat them all, and I don’t want to hurt you if that’s too much and I _know_ you won’t tell me no if it _is_ too much, so let’s stick with: _a lot_.” 

A warm flush crept over him, the cozy rose-gold of trust. He loved that she made him feel _known_ , that she was aware of his weak spots and did what she could to protect them. “Okay,” he said, sinking farther into the pillows, into her and Henry. “Thank you, I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, brushing Maura’s bacon-scallop creation against his lips. He made a small sound of anticipation at the hearty, salty smell, at the promise of being indulged and taken care of, and he heard Henry echo it behind him.

He ate it from her fingers, and it was soft and warm and greasy and a little maple-y. It might have been the kind of hors d’oeuvre that would have appeared at one of his parents’ parties, but this situation - cradled between his boyfriend and his girlfriend, sweater rucked up over his potbelly, being fed from someone’s hand, knowing he could be just Gansey here instead of stepping into the persona he played at those parties - transformed it into something that connoted comfort so deeply that he could barely stand to associate it with his other life. 

(Probably, he thought, his mother wouldn’t even serve bacon at her own events anymore, since she’d been attempting to goad her husband and son into a healthier lifestyle since Gansey had arrived home for Thanksgiving freshman year a full fifteen pounds heavier than he’d been when he left for school. He’d tried to tell her, break after break, that he was happy with his body this way and wasn’t interested in losing weight, but she’d seemed to develop a sort of selective deafness whenever it came up.)

Blue and Henry alternated feeding him off the plate from the kitchen as he filled them in on the first half of his Christmas. They groaned and winced in the right places, and laughed when he tried to be sardonic or when he imitated one of his relatives, and they smothered him in kisses and cuddles when his voice trembled and when he’d finished speaking, immersing him in as much comfort as they could. He loved them so fiercely for it, and if his eyes got damp for a moment against Henry’s shoulder, it was because he was so full of appreciation for them that he wasn’t sure what else to do with it. 

He’d left out the remarks he’d received about his weight, for fear of making Blue or Henry think that his relatives’ two cents had made him doubt or resent or regret their food-related antics. But when Blue produced an enormous Tupperware of assorted cookies from deep beneath a pile of clothes in her closet (“so nobody would steal them before you came over,” she explained), a jolt found his stomach to the tune of his mother’s voice. 

It was an echo from earlier in the day, as he’d stacked a few gourmet gingerbread people (Blue refused to gender her gingerbread creations, and Gansey privately, obstinately agreed) on a napkin. His mother had put a hand on his shoulder, lightly enough that he didn’t feel threatened but firmly enough to let him know who had the upper hand - the same grip she used in the most intimate of _Vote For Me_ spiels. He’d bitten down on his lip anyway, and braced as she’d said, “Dick, honey, you don’t need any of those. We’re getting a little chunky, aren’t we?”

The royal _we_ had bothered him enough in its saccharine condescension, but then, when he’d tried to tell her that maybe he didn’t _need_ them, but he wanted them, because it was the holidays and you were supposed to indulge, she’d touched her own stomach instead of his, as if to emphasize the stark contrast between them, and spoken over him. “We’ll work on it this year, won’t we? A New Year's resolution for you to add to your list!” 

She’d taken the napkin and cookies from him and bustled off to mingle further, and he had stood in front of the dessert spread, stung and frustrated and beginning to ebb with anger that she still hadn’t _heard_ him. He’d crammed four cookies into his mouth one after the other, before anyone could see, and slugged back two glasses of virgin eggnog even though it made him gag a little, and he’d slouched through the rest of the afternoon with a bitterness that only spread further with each relative who poked his belly or cracked a joke about his meal plan or remarked that they thought he’d gained the freshman fifteen _last_ year.

But he didn’t find himself _doubting_ anymore. He’d never resented the weight he’d gained with Blue and Henry, and he’d never regretted it, but he was guilty of doubt - that he’d made the right decision in choosing to explore this with them, that it was perfectly normal to like the way he looked with fifteen or twenty or thirty extra pounds on his frame, that he had any idea at all what was proper or normal or healthy for himself. Historically he had never excelled at coping constructively, or so his Harvard-issue therapist had suggested, and he’d wondered if maybe he’d just skipped from one unhealthy coping mechanism to another.

Last year, he’d tried to please. He had dutifully spent his winter break drinking his coffee with skim and skipping dessert and forgoing fried foods around his parents, to maintain the facade that he respected their advice and was trying his best to take it. But this year, he’d resolved to either eat meals as he intended to eat them or avoid eating with his parents altogether, because he was tired of feeling like he was wrong about his own feelings about his own body, and tired of not being listened to, and tired of not being _heard_.

So Blue’s Tupperware of cookies looked an awful lot like a comfort, and a _so-there_ , with a simple _I want those_ on its heels, pure and unburnished in the same way he’d believed in magic when he was younger. He knew now that magic was a more complex thing than that, but right now he did not want complex: he wanted simple, and he wanted comfort, and he wanted loving.

“What kinds did you make?” he asked, and Blue pried the lid off to show him.

“Gingerbread as usual, some real thick iced sugar cookies, shortbread dipped in chocolate, and snickerdoodles.”

“I’m going to lay claim on a couple of those snickerdoodles,” said Henry, reaching across Gansey’s belly, “but you’re welcome to the rest, Ganseyman. Are you going to drink that cocktail?”

“I think it might knock me out,” said Gansey, and Blue nodded a confirmation. “Help yourself.”

He passed the glass to Henry, who took a tentative sip before wincing, raising his eyebrows, and taking a larger sip. “That kicks!” he said. “I’ll be draped over you by the time we’re both done here.”

“Feel free,” said Gansey, gesturing to his lap, and when he turned back to Blue, she was holding a shortbread out to him. 

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

She raised and lowered one eyebrow like the shot of a starting pistol. “I put three sticks of butter in these.”

Gansey and Henry both made sounds of awe and incredulity, and Blue grinned.

“Eat up,” she said. “The sweater I’m knitting you has room for at least ten more pounds.”

Blue had a way of offhandedly tossing out mentions of his weight gain that never failed to make him whine with how casual, how _natural_ she made it sound. She kissed his nose carefully, smirking at the whimper he’d let out, and worked a hand up his sweater as he chewed. The shortbread was crumbly and almond-y, the chocolate rich and decadent around all that butter, and he moaned again at how good it was. He wanted to cram as many as he could into his mouth at once to have more of that flavor, that texture, and he told Blue as much.

She blushed furiously, and Henry made his own small noise of exquisitely tortured exhilaration. Gansey heard him take another long swallow of cocktail, and in response, fit four shortbreads into his mouth and turned to him.

“How is that?” he asked around the heaping mouthful of cookie, nodding to the cocktail, satisfaction warming his stomach when Henry, too, went red.

“Not fair,” he whined, putting his snickerdoodles aside to find one of Gansey’s love handles and grab a handful. “You know all my weaknesses.”

Gansey arched his hips at his touch, Henry’s fingers rough and urgent against his skin. “You know all of mine, it’s only fair,” he said, and swiped Henry’s cocktail glass to wash down the shortbread crumbs.

The cocktail was fizzy and fruity and overly sweet, and as soon as it hit Gansey’s stomach he felt a burp rising up. He allowed himself to at least try to cover it, but it rumbled out of him before he could stifle it. 

“Mmm,” he said, tilting his head against Blue’s. “Another cookie, please?” 

“Just one this time?” she teased, and he nodded.

 She fed him one of the thick, iced sugar cookies, and scooted over until she was sitting on one of his legs and one of Henry’s. He leaned back and spread his legs as much as he could as she set the Tupperware aside and went for his stomach with both hands, kneading and pushing at it. Another belch rolled up, and he didn’t bother to try to muffle it this time.

“You must have eaten so much at your parents’ earlier,” she said, pinching some of his gut between her fingers. Her other hand splayed across the thick meat of his thigh, more fat than muscle now. “All that rich, expensive food, it’s no wonder you’re getting so chubby.” He shivered beneath her to hear her say it, and again when she added, “Did you have seconds? I’m sure you did.”

He groped for the Tupperware and Henry pulled it within his reach, and fed him a snickerdoodle to boot. “Thirds,” he said, watching both of their faces go pained. “So much duck and lamb and potatoes … I could barely get up afterward. It’s a good thing my family talks so much or I wouldn’t have gotten away with it.”

He’d been as wound up as they looked right now, quietly stuffing himself while his relatives got caught up in politics and gossip and familial scandal. He’d taken portion after portion, avoided his mother’s eyes, and eaten until he thought the button of his pants might burst. He’d sat back, breathing heavily, chest and stomach tight, and spread his legs as much as his chair would allow, and palmed his belly under the table, working his fingers beneath the waistband to give himself some breathing room. He’d stifled all his burps, coughed over the groans his taxed belly had let out as he’d digested, tried to look as innocent as possible.

Only Helen had caught on, and she’d caught up with him later, when he’d sunk into the couch to bloat with more freedom. She’d prodded at his stomach and said, “It’s good to see that you're not immune to _all_ earthly delights, little brother,” and she had smirked when he’d blushed.  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’d said, although he was obviously uncomfortable and obviously trying not to jostle his stomach, and she’d just laughed.

“All right, then go get me another glass of wine.” 

He’d tried to get up, but his stomach cramped, and he groaned and sank back down. She’d laughed again, poked him hard enough for him to yelp, and shaken her head. 

“Dad has Tums in the bathroom upstairs if you need them,” she’d said, and she’d finally left him alone, feeling seen but, oddly, not judged.

“You ate all that?” Blue asked now, hushed, and he nodded, letting Henry put another snickerdoodle in his mouth. They were chewy and a little more cinnamony than he would have liked, but they were still tasty, and they were still being fed to him. 

“It took me forever to be able to stand up,” he admitted, mouth full. “I still think my button is going to pop.”

“Does it hurt?” Blue asked, running her open palm down the curve of his stomach, and Gansey nodded _yes_ . She reached beneath it - he had an _underbelly_ now, and it thrilled him because it was such a tremendous place to be kissed - and fumbled for his fly.

He gasped with relief the moment it came undone, feeling his stomach swell out into the new space. He groaned with pleasure, exhaled. “Thank you, Jane. Oh, that’s so much better.”

Blue pushed a gingerbread cookie into his mouth, sweet and spicy with nutmeg and royal icing, and he begged her for more, dizzy with the freedom to bloat as much as he needed to. 

“I really like when you beg,” she said softly, grabbing at a handful of his side. Some of her hair had come free from her braids, and it clung to her flushed, freckled, sparkling cheeks. “I love hearing you ask for more.”

Henry shifted onto his side, one of his hands creeping down to tease at the inside of Gansey’s thighs through his pants, tracing along the inseam where the fabric puckered with strain. “It’s true,” he said, kissing at Gansey’s jaw as Blue fed him another cookie. “You’re very pretty when you beg. So spoiled, so sweet. Impossible to say no to you.”

Gansey whined and squirmed at so much simultaneous attention, mouth too full for anything else. He felt like every nerve in his body was operating at full capacity, overwhelmed and suffused with pure pleasure. 

“What about dessert, earlier?” Henry asked after several more cookies. “Weren’t you too full to even think about it?”

He wanted the thrill of hearing Gansey tell him no, of course he wasn’t too full, he ate dessert until he was so stuffed he could barely breathe - Gansey knew that. He supposed he could have told him so, but it wouldn’t have been true, and Gansey couldn’t lie to him. So he swallowed his mouthful of gingerbread and said, “I tried, but my mom caught me and, uh, told me I’m getting too chunky, so … I ate four gingerbread people and chugged two glasses of eggnog and that was all I managed. I’m sorry.” 

He gazed down at the swell of his gut in his lap as he said so, then chanced a look up to Blue. “Your gingerbread is so much better, though. The one my mom gets is dry.” 

“Because it’s soaked in _diet culture_ ,” said Blue, so savagely that it made him laugh with a wild, validated sort of delight. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t disappoint us.”

“Yeah,” agreed Henry, slurping down the rest of his cocktail. His cheeks were flushed pink, his dark eyes wide and liquid. “You don’t need to do that kind of stuff to impress us, Gansey Three. And you don’t need to apologize for _not_ doing it. You don’t have some responsibility to us to eat as much as possible whenever you can.” He planted a loud kiss on Gansey’s cheek. “Besides, your mom is wrong.”

Blue nodded fervently. “You’re getting chunky, but not _too_ chunky. No such thing. As long as you’re happy with it, you’re perfect.” 

“I’m so happy with it,” said Gansey, reaching to touch both of them - Blue’s knee, Henry’s elbow. He was pleasantly surprised and reassured that saying it aloud felt entirely true. “Thank you.”

“We love you no matter how much you eat,” said Blue, petting his hair.

“Or how much you weigh,” Henry added, patting his stomach and giving it a little jiggle.

Blue nodded. “None of that has any bearing on how we feel about you. It’s just a very nice bonus.” She kissed him his forehead, smoothing his hair back, and then wobbled the bottom of his belly. “Do you want to keep going?”

More than anything, Gansey did. He wanted to keep eating, keep feeling their hands on him, keep basking in the surety that they loved the true Gansey, the one without any ribbons or pretty packaging or trappings.

“More than anything,” he said.

Blue shook her Tupperware. “Henry, do you want a turn with these?”

“Actually,” said Henry, fitting one of his snickerdoodles into his mouth, “I think I’d rather worship on this holy day, if you’ll budge up just a little, Blue Diamond.”

So Blue budged, tucking herself beside Gansey at just the right angle to play with the little roll beginning between his chest and his stomach, and Henry lay on his belly between Gansey’s thighs and mouthed at the soft, thick roll above his waistband, and Gansey ate and whined and arched his hips when Henry left bruises. Henry kept up a running mantra - _Ganseyman, do you have any idea how absolutely beautiful you are? Stunning. So soft and plump and inviting. Gorgeous, gorgeous from all that gorging. Incredible. Truly magnificent._

Every word of Henry’s felt like it was going straight to his heart, building up the self-assurance that had begun to crumble around his relatives earlier, and he marveled at Henry’s ability to intuit that he needed that, his ability to make him feel known and understood and comforted. If there was anything to convince Gansey that their triad was meant to be, it was that having two voices to reassure him when he was struggling had allowed him to grow in directions he had not previously thought possible. Blue steadied, and Henry encouraged, and sometimes they stumbled instead and Gansey had the privilege of steadying or encouraging them. Fox Way’s multitudes had been proven right once more: it was unquestionably, unequivocally better with three.

Blue fed him and murmured encouragements - some saucy, some earnest - and held him, and Henry kissed at his underbelly and murmured compliments - some saucy, some earnest - and held him, and Gansey ate and ate and ate, his stomach heavy with food and his chest heavy with affection.

When he was so full that his eyes began to close and his stomach began to ache, Gansey shook his head at Blue when she brought another sugar cookie to his lips, and she set the container aside and lay beside him.

“You did so well,” she murmured into his ear, stroking his hair with one hand and his stomach with the other. “We're so proud of you. Do you feel okay?”

He nodded, feeling like he was swimming just below the surface, a pleasant hazy feeling settling over him like the thick Sherpa blankets his parents kept at the schoolhouse for cold nights. “I feel spectacular,” he managed, and he felt Henry shift between his legs.

“Shall I continue?” Henry asked sleepily. “Or will I hurt you?”

Henry had left his stomach thoroughly marked up with a bouquet of bruises, had kissed and squeezed his thighs through his khakis. He had made every reachable inch of Gansey feel content and warm and beautiful, and Gansey sank into that feeling.

“Come here,” he said, around a satisfying belch. “Come kiss me.”

Blue kissed his hair and the soft push of fat beneath his chin, and Henry kissed him gently on the lips and then on the cheeks, the forehead, the nose, the jaw, until he fell asleep beside Gansey, snoring gently. Blue curled up on Gansey’s other side, the velvet of her dress soft beneath his arm. He toyed with her hair and knocked some of the tinsel loose, and she laughed, perfect and soft.

“Was this a better Christmas than you had earlier?” she whispered, her lips just a breath from his cheek.

He exhaled comfortably, the weight of his stomach pleasantly bearing down on his hips, Henry’s warm form pressed to his other side. He was awash in love, he decided, adrift in it, and he did not want anyone or anything to reel him in.

“Light years better,” he answered, and he kissed her forehead, and she settled her hand on his stomach, and the moment was holier than anything Gansey had ever seen.

**Author's Note:**

> this is not the holiday fic i intended to write, but it is very much more holiday-oriented than that one would have been anyway, so a win's a win. this is unbeta'd because i wrote it between 11pm and 3am last night and wanted to get it up before boxing day was over (L M A O), so any mistakes are 100% a result of that time frame. i hope you enjoy it anyway, and that you had a lovely, cookie-filled holiday!


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